In many contemporary urban spaces, political information accrues to high status neighborhoods. This might exacerbate political inequality as the information-rich and information-poor each talk primarily with others like themselves. When information is specific and broadly diffused through the media, however, the convenience and low cognitive costs of everyday conversation could be especially helpful for the disadvantaged. This article shows how political conversations intensify or ameliorate spatial knowledge gaps, using a six-wave panel survey in fifty Brazilian neighborhoods between 2002 and 2006. Multilevel models demonstrate that conversation was more frequent in high education neighborhoods, but had a greater impact on specific, factual knowledge in low-education neighborhoods, leading to shrinking knowledge gaps. However, conversation slightly widened spatial gaps in socially perceived general knowledge.

The importance of technological innovation in health care is due to the historical ascendancy of scientific medicine over other therapies. Scientific medicine in turn was strengthened through an alliance between professional elites and corporate interests. That alliance has been destabilized by developments in health care politics, by changes in industrial structures and by alterations in democratic politics. The medical goods industries remain powerful lobbies, but they operate in an increasingly competitive lobbying environment.

An examination of executive-legislative conflict occurring in US congressional committees between 1947 and 1990 reveals that, despite current concerns of gridlock, the overall level of conflict declined during this period. There are two structural sources of inter-branch conflict – constituent and partisan. The constituent basis for conflict in the United States is rooted in the differing manner in which members of the two branches are elected. Because the executive has a national constituency, it is primarily concerned with matters of national policy. Members of Congress, who have smaller, more homogeneous constituencies, are more concerned with the geographically distributive effects of these policies. The authors' evidence suggests that conflict between the executive and legislative in the United States is greatest on issues that are of both national and distributive significance. The partisan basis for conflict, long established in the House and increasingly visible in the Senate, is reinforced by competitive political contests. Yet conflict between members of Congress and executive officials of the opposite party did not increase between 1947 and 1990. And conflict with executive officials of the same party declined, producing an overall drop in executive-legislative conflict.

Several attempts have been made recently to explain the formation of coalitions, especially government coalitions. Most of these theories assume that each of the actors involved (political parties in the case of government coalitions) uses only one criterion — such as the ‘size’ of the coalition or its ‘ideological diversity’ — in choosing between alternative coalitions. The criterion yields for each actor a preference ranking of all the possible coalitions. It is then assumed that the coalitions which are most likely to form are those which are ‘in equilibrium’ or ‘undominated’, a coalition T being undominated if there is no other coalition which is preferred by all its members to T.

Attitudes towards a departing administration can help shape attitudes towards candidates, especially when the incumbent vice-president is one of the candidates. This succession effect was apparent in the 1988 presidential election, when Vice-President Bush benefited from the enduring popularity of retiring President Reagan. This article develops a model in which succession effects, the net candidate score and party identification affect the general election vote. Analysis shows that this effect remains when controls are instituted for retrospective voting more generally. Attitudes towards Reagan also had an indirect impact by affecting the net Bush-Dukakis candidate score; altogether the estimated impact of the Reagan effect in 1988 was to turn the vice-president's predicted loss into his observed victory. Additionally, a succession effect was detected in the 1988 nominating campaign, with Bush's popularity over Dole benefiting from reactions to the Reagan administration. There is evidence of succession effects in other presidential elections, particularly a Johnson effect in 1968.

'Life is all opposites, and a child born with a silver spoon may have to swallow many spoonfuls of bitterness.’ (The childhood nurse of Sir Henry Page Croft MP, quoted in My Life of Strife by Sir Henry Page Croft — later Lord Croft.)

This article examines the results of the USSR Supreme Soviet elections held in June 1970, and presents an analysis of the patterns of drop-out and re-election among deputies to the previous Supreme Soviet, elected in June 1966.

The overall conclusion to be drawn from the discussion contained in Part I of this article is that, even in respect of what are usually regarded in the literature as being some of its more distinctively democratic characteristics, the American system of urban government is lacking. It may even be in these respects less democratic than the British. Whether it is agreed that the attributes discussed in Part I are those of a democracy or not, by its own lights American city government is deficient.

This article argues that the broad and legally enforceable protection that bilateral investment treaties (BITs) offer to foreign investors worsens the human rights practices of developing countries. BITs lock in initial conditions attractive to investors that are linked to vertical investment flows and investment and trade competition. They also constrain the provision of welfare benefits or basic infrastructure. The lock-in and constraining effects are sources of popular grievance and dissent in states that host foreign investment. BIT-protected investor rights, however, limit the ability of governments to back-down vis-à-vis investors, lowering the relative cost of human rights violations. Finally, this study suggests that democratic regimes mitigate the negative effect of BITs. Evidence from 113 developing countries from 1981 to 2009 supports the hypotheses.

Garrett, McLean and Machover's critique (see pp. 563–8) of my recent Note on the use of power indices to analyse the UK's stance on qualified majority voting in the expanded European Union Council of Ministers focuses on both my choice of power index and the validity of the use of any such indices.

In a recent Note in this Journal (‘Does Local Party Organization Matter?’, III (1972), 381–3) I reported evidence which suggested that in local elections party organization could have a major impact.1 This conclusion was reached by comparing voting movements in a marginal Newcastle ward, Walkergate, where Labour organization was very weak in 1970 but strong in 1971, with changes in Newcastle as a whole. In this Note a similar comparison is made, with evidence drawn from a Conservative ward, Heaton, in 1972, which shows even more striking evidence of organizational impact. Recent discussion in this and other journals about ward marginality and turnout2 is considered in the light of this evidence.

Political socialization refers to the developmental process through which political orientations and patterns of behavior are acquired by members of a society. Some persons acquire only limited political dispositions as they mature while others continuously elaborate and revise personal systems of political belief, value, motivation and activity as they pass through childhood arid adult life. In some part socialization of political orientations is conscious self-adaptation to an otherwise confusing social environment. More often, perhaps, it is the result of taking unconscious cues and examples from such convenient sources as family, school, peers and mass media of communication.

In the general election of October 1974 the Scottish National Party gained 30·4 per cent of the vote in Scotland. This result and the build-up to it in the previous two elections, seemed to indicate a new pattern for Scottish voting. British and American writers had drawn attention to the decline of partisanship as a basis for voting. In Britain, the class basis of this partisanship had been dominant but now appeared to recede. Growing support for the SNP might have been an extension of this. Some went further and argued that a new issue – self-government for Scotland – had displaced class loyalties.

Two dominant arguments within international political theory, arguments from humanity and arguments from justice, can be distinguished along the lines of the well-known distinction between omissions and actions, respectively. The discussion in this paper shows that people in general are psychologically biased towards thinking that omissions producing harm are less morally grave than actions producing equivalent harm. It also canvasses evidence suggesting that greater moral gravity correlates with heightened guilt, and that heightened guilt is more likely to lead to action that would alleviate it, i.e. remedial or compensatory action. For those reasons, it is suggested that we should expect arguments from justice, which track actions, to be a more feasible means to the desired outcome of (local commitment to) global justice than arguments from humanity, which track omissions.

Over the past decade, millions of refugees have fled their countries of origin and asked for asylum abroad. Some of these refugees do not receive asylum, but are not deported. Instead they are detained, or denied basic rights of residency, some forced into enclosed camps. Hoping to escape such conditions, they wish to return to unsafe countries, and ask for help from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In such cases, should NGOs and the UN assist refugees to return? Drawing on original data gathered in South Sudan, and existing data from around the world, I argue that they should assist with return if certain conditions are met. First, the UN and NGOs must try to put an end to coercive conditions before helping with return. Secondly, helping with return must not encourage the government to expand the use of coercive policies to encourage more to return. Finally, NGOs and the UN must ensure that refugees are fully informed of the risks of returning. Organizations must either conduct research in countries of origin or lobby the government to allow refugees to visit their countries of origin before making a final decision.

The recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been characterized by the deployment of large private military forces, under contract with the US administration. The use of so-called private military corporations (PMCs) and, more generally, of mercenaries, has long attracted criticisms. This article argues that under certain conditions (drawn from the Just War tradition), there is nothing inherently objectionable about mercenarism. It begins by exposing a weakness in the most obvious justification for mercenarism, to wit, the justification from freedom of occupational choice. It then deploys a less obvious, but stronger, argument – one that appeals to the importance of enabling just defensive killings. Finally, it rebuts five moral objections to mercenarism.

This article investigates the determinants and consequences of manipulating COVID-19 statistics in an authoritarian federation using the Russian case. It abandons the interpretation of the authoritarian regime as a unitary actor and acknowledges the need to account for a complex interaction of various bureaucratic and political players to understand the spread and the logic of manipulation. Our estimation strategy takes advantage of a natural experiment where the onset of the pandemic adjourned the national referendum enabling new presidential terms for Putin. To implement the rescheduled referendum, Putin needed sub-national elites to manufacture favourable COVID-19 statistics to convince the public that the pandemic was under control. While virtually all regions engaged in data manipulation, there was a substantial variation in the degree of misreporting. A third of this variation can be explained by an asynchronous schedule of regional governors’ elections, winning which depends almost exclusively on support from the federal authorities.

This article explores the origins of youth engagement in school, community and democracy. Specifically, it considers the role of psychosocial or non-cognitive abilities, like grit or perseverance. Using a novel original large-scale longitudinal survey of students linked to school administrative records and a variety of modeling techniques – including sibling, twin and individual fixed effects – the study finds that psychosocial abilities are a strong predictor of youth civic engagement. Gritty students miss less class time and are more engaged in their schools, are more politically efficacious, are more likely to intend to vote when they become eligible, and volunteer more. Our work highlights the value of psychosocial attributes in the political socialization of young people.